The Lords of Silence Quotes

“Now he does not care. Mostly, this lassitude appals him. He cannot understand why he no longer cares. But, deep down, buried where his old heart once beat, there is something else. Something infinitely shameful, so that he does not think of it often and pretends that it is just another part of his sickness, but it is there all the same – relief. He no longer has to make the effort, and that is a pleasure in itself. It is like falling asleep, or sinking into a warm pool of water. He lets it all slide, all degrade. He can feel his muscles atrophy and does not intervene. He can feel his bowels swell with inflammation, and it matters not. This is a kind of release. This is like a fist, clenched for a lifetime, slowly relaxing.”
― Chris Wraight, The Lords of Silence

“This is a vindication of their esoteric creed, of the belief that through entropy comes apotheosis, of the wholehearted embrace of mortality in all its truest and most honest aspects.”
― Chris Wraight, The Lords of Silence

“Forgive,’ he says, speaking softly to the Little Lord at his elbow. The tiny daemon giggles, then farts liquidly into the crook of his armour. That counts as forgiveness, probably.”
― Chris Wraight, The Lords of Silence

“Like all his Legion, he enters combat in silence, letting his work speak for him. To invoke another, even the primarch, would be to admit weakness, a lack of self-sufficiency, to open the suspicion that there is luck or favour involved in these things.”
― Chris Wraight, The Lords of Silence

“He hears the boom and roll of drums, the braying of indentured herds, the background drone of a quadrillion flies, all directed towards one glorious end. Evangelism. This place is the mother church, the incubator for every bio-creed and flesh catechism, the pregnant source, the fertile seed. It is all for dissemination elsewhere. The Legion will only rest when all planets are Plague Planets, and the bells toll out across a galaxy made into this image of spectacular decay.”
― Chris Wraight, The Lords of Silence

“Golkh limps. One of his legs is wasted away within its armour-shell, yet still supports his considerable bulk. The bones are shot to powder, the muscles are a stringy mess, and yet he still walks. Such mysteries.”
― Chris Wraight, The Lords of Silence

“Come about,’ Vorx orders, gauging how prepared they are for this. ‘Ready for defensive broadside.’ Many look up at him, but only Hovik, poor ruined Hovik, dares to speak. ‘Lord, we are vulnerable,’ she says carefully. ‘Lances burned out, damage taken on both flanks.’ It only takes a second for Vorx to see that she is right. He allows himself a moment of self-reproach – he had enjoyed the destruction of the nova cannon and has let that colour his judgement. After so long, he ought to know better. ‘Well observed,’ he says, bowing to acknowledge the correction. He is not a vindictive commander. ‘Move us away, then. Just a little time, to get things in order.”
― Chris Wraight, The Lords of Silence

“When his ramshackle cavalcade finally breaks out, bursting upwards and outwards of the long and winding well shafts, it is met by screams and panic. Slert smiles at this, clambering arduously over an eroded stone lip, and limps out towards them. These are mortal humans, hundreds strong, locked in a chamber they must have thought entirely secure, and here are monsters now clawing their way up from the floor itself. How nightmarish for them. How like every bad dream they have ever had. ‘Calm down,’ he says, amused by the reaction.”
― Chris Wraight, The Lords of Silence

“That is why she is the Cultivator, as much a custodian of living things as inert materials. One day, far into the future, the entire ship will be a single amorphous organism. She is helping to make this a reality, to coax and to nurture. It is hard work, back-breaking and relentless, but it gives her a certain measure of pride. She has sons and daughters growing up in the lower decks, already learning to grasp a ratchet and siphon a fuel sump. If they survive the mutations and the plagues, one of them might one day become Cultivator. And if they are blessed with fertility, in centuries to come one of their progeny might be there, on that mystical and long-awaited day when Solace speaks for the first time, not in hisses of steam or scrapes of iron but in a real voice with real words.”
― Chris Wraight, The Lords of Silence

“He estimates that there are thousands of men and women like him on this ship – probably tens of thousands. Few of them ever speak to him. As far as he can tell, few of them ever speak to one another. They seem strangely content, stumbling across the decks, just as he does. Some have tasks, most do not appear to. This is a listless ship. And yet it functions, somehow.”
― Chris Wraight, The Lords of Silence

“Dantine knows that these things are called Little Lords, and he is still mystified as to what their purpose is, or why they are tolerated. They are disgusting sacs, ranging in size from a fist’s clench to a full lung. They strut and caper like foul infants, letting loose gouts of flatus or breaking into vicious little fights. And yet Slert reaches down for it now, picking it up gently. It settles into the crook of his arm, gurgling contentedly.”
― Chris Wraight, The Lords of Silence

“Fury is coming, Gallowsman,’ he says. ‘Fury is coming to another world.”
― Chris Wraight, The Lords of Silence